


while my guitar gently weeps

by TheDoomkitten



Category: A Host of Gentle Terrors
Genre: Acceptance, Minor Body Horror, Minor Gender Feels, My Gay Ass Reading A Lot Into A Relationship, Other, Philosophical Rambling, Pure unadulterated Love, Tenderness, The End of the World, Wild Extrapolation of Canon, and the beginning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-09
Updated: 2019-11-09
Packaged: 2021-01-26 00:07:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21364909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDoomkitten/pseuds/TheDoomkitten
Summary: The Masked Wanderer finds a guitar, and more importantly, music.
Relationships: The Masked Wanderer/The Avalerion





	while my guitar gently weeps

Sometimes, you wonder what it's like to fly. 

To see the land shifting before you, merging, opening, closing, rifting into beautiful and terrible new places while those below slip into shadow, then emerge somewhere wondrous (or deadly. Occasionally both. You know this from experience.) And to be so close to the beholding sky, a sea of irises opening and closing with the land and the Door to the beat of some arcane rhythm.

You can hear it sometimes. The music of the Deplotted Lands, the raise of a conductor's baton that brings down chaos when it descends. In the musty corners of the caverns, in the nothing between red and blue, in the forever heartbeat—do you still have one of those? You don't remember—of slowed time. 

And in the distant, welcoming flap of vast wings. 

You cough, clearing some of the dust from your filter as you stumble out of the latest ancient shrine and into a rainbow of coral. Whenever you claw your way out of whatever dismal, cavernous shrine you delved, it takes longer than it should for your eyes to adjust to the new color of the sky behind your mask. You wonder if it's another change, another mutation that crept across your body without you even noticing. Eyes above know that happens more than you care to admit. 

The thought stirs an old, forgotten sensation, languishing in the darkest recesses of your mind, away from the myriad lights of day. A similar feeling of alienation, of otherness. Of not fitting together quite right. Of ostracization. You suppose that's why you chose the devil mask when your jaw began to segment; it seemed symbolically appropriate to your life before the changes took hold. Whatever chaos the mutation has brought, you're thankful for it erasing the humanity that you found... less than desirable when you first acquired it.

You've found a renewed appreciation for symbols of late, as metaphor and reality blurred with every millimeter the crack in the Door widened. Symbols have power; more powerful than any machination of mankind and-

You shake your head violently, the valley of beautiful, spiralling coral blurring as you put one foot in front of the other. You don't know how much longer you are for this world, with ideas like that plaguing you at every turn. You haven't descended to total preoccupation with flesh, the glistening Yaldabaoth of material that lurks beneath plotting to recreate a world that has long left it behind. Nor have you turned your gaze upwards (inwards?) to the Sophia beyond the Door, and the shadows she casts upon the world. You're becoming something more than either. Your poking and prodding and learning and knowing and seeing may reach synthesis, but the result will not be more than the sum of its parts. You know this, even as your certainty of this fact slips away.

What you need is perspective. What you need is an anchor. What you need is a fr-

A great gust blows, nearly knocking you over as you pass over the threshold between coral and shale. Above, massive wings blot out the sun, and you couldn't stop the smile literally splitting your face even if you wanted to. You wave, and The Avalerion waves back before descending with dizzying speed, grin brighter than the sun that their wings obscure.

You sit on a shelf of cyan shale, watching the sky as your companion flutters and flies excitedly all around you. You exchange stories as warmth fills your chest, pulsing through your body in time with a rhythm you can almost hear. The Deplotted Lands are never safe. Even if they were, their very nature would twist until it was an inhospitable roil once more. But right here, right now? With them, feeling the soft heat emanating from their wings mix with the downy blaze your own husk fills itself with? The quiet bond between the two of you, playing an unheard melody?

It's as if the ground is solid beneath your feet again 

You can feel your time running short 'ere long. You only have a few minutes/hours/days until they depart for the clouds once more, and who knows how long it will be until you meet again? The time is now. You tell The Avalerion that you've found something new... well, not exactly new. But it's old enough to basically be the same thing. As you rifle around in your bottomless bag, they cock their head to the side, smiling. It reminds you of a pure, uncorrupted bird: simple, sweet, pure. Beautiful.

—Oh? Another scrap of history? I swear, you have a problem. You have at least two full tapestries in that bag of yours by now, by my count. The past weighs you down, you know.— 

You blush behind your mask. The tapestry is important, you insist. With history so buried beneath earth and machinery and mucus and shadow and the Weavers crushed beneath the weight of their own nobility, somebody needs to compile it all so the next curious wanderer won't have to risk life and limb for it. And anyways, it's three now. 

—Feeling pedantic, are we?—

You choose to take the moral high ground and ignore their friendly jibe. Finding what you're looking for, you grunt and pull it out of your pack: a guitar. 

The Avalerion gasps with delight. —Oh my! What is that?—

It's a guitar, you explain. Some ancient device you retrieved from beside a Weaver's loom. You pluck a few strings to demonstrate, and their eyes shine. You say that you might be able to do more, but you can't find any clues in the tapestries except to "listen to the roil," whatever that means.

Listen to the roil... the rhythm... it clicks. As The Avalerion fidgets, longing for the sky, you wring your hands, wondering how to bring up a question that's been on your mind for some time now. 

Just before they go and say their goodbyes, you blurt out a question: can they take you with them?

They freeze, eyes darting to and fro. —I... Maybe? If- no, no. I can't, I'm...— The Avalerion trails off, refusing to look at you.

You stroke their wing, and they purr, some of the tension leaving their body. But before The Avalerion completely relaxes, they stiffen up again, turning their head away. You ask what's wrong.

—You. You're not the first I... zie, zie... I was stupid, I said yes, I couldn't do anything to save ziem...—

There's a moment of silence that stretches for months. You're not really sure what to say, so of course your stupid idiot mouth expels the first thing that comes to mind: the exact number of times that you've died. 

The Avalerion gawks at you, shocked. You explain that it isn't exactly that you've died, except that it is, and that... the shadows. That's what you end your sentence with. Wow, way to clarify your point! You clear your throat and try again. Every time that you should die, or come close to death, you go to the Other Place instead. Where the shadows linger. And you close your eyes and you're somewhere else instead.

—That doesn't really make me feel any better.— They're not smiling, but they're not wallowing in painful memories either. You count that as a win.

You reach forward, pause, gingerly take off your glove, and cup The Avalerion's cheek with your hand. Whatever you do, wherever you go, whatever happens... you'll always find your way back to them. No matter what.

You stay like that, frozen in time, for an eternal second. Then, gulping, they nod and kneel, gesturing for you to climb on their back. You gently clamber on. Their entire body feels like their wings: soft, tender. Welcoming. 

Then they soar. They start slowly, circling over the spiraling landscape as you acclimate to the feeling (and they overcome their own anxieties, memories of blood and sorrow slowly pushed out of their mind), then going faster and faster and faster as they accelerate to their normal speed. You can't suppress a yelp of fright as The Avalerion flies towards the clouds, and they nearly screech to a halt, babbling and offering to let you back down before you reassure them that it's fine, really, you like this, this is great. And the thing is, you're not even lying. It's beautiful. You've often wondered what it's like to fly, but experiencing it, feeling the wind, is something else entirely. You begin whooping with pure, unadulterated joy as your companion laughs, bringing the smooth fire within your heart to a roaring crescendo.

Finally, you're both cruising just below the clouds, watching back as they slowly blink. Slowly, carefully, you undo your mask and goggles, so you can feel the wind on your face. It's nothing like on the ground, it's...

It's...

You don't even have the words to describe it. And as you take it all in, the red and the blue and the dark and the light and the world and the sky and the flesh and the knowledge and everything entwined with your angel, you can hear it. In its full glory, in its full melody, rhythm, and harmony. And you know. 

You take out the guitar again, never minding the impossibility of the task, and you begin playing. The Avalerion startles, the motion somehow not knocking you off their back, then begins humming along with your stumbling song. You fumble your fingers across the strings, but they somehow find their natural place in the synthesis of everything that is and is not. And, by some miracle, by some blessing, you don't lose yourself.

It's simply you, The Avalerion, and the music. No symbols. No themes. No narrative. Just a pure, crystallized moment of happiness. 

The song fades away, as does all things, but the feeling of antithesis's antithesis remains, anchoring you to the physical world and, more importantly, them. You stare at each other for one more moment, then you lean in.

Your jaws interlock perfectly.


End file.
